No Compensation for Lives Lost and Trauma Incurred in Gaza: A Global Failure

The head of the United Nations coordination of aid for Gaza has criticised the international community for not helping the innocuous people of Palestine.

In an interview earlier this month, Kaag said the situation remains a “major disaster” and claimed that attempts to provide essential assistance have plummeted. Although the UN has been very active and Technical cooperation is in progress in finding ways to offer help, the current structures are unable to fulfil the needs of the civilians in Gaza. 

 Still, even the most dedicated attempts have been made by the UN. Kaag pointed out that delivering aid in Gaza is dangerous and stated that it is deemed as ‘the most unsafe place in the world to work’ Without a ceasefire and the freeing of Israeli hostages still being held, no little progress can be made. 

The UN has been facing difficulties. For instance, delivery of aid has been hindered through convoys being attacked by the Israeli forces and some of its structures that have been attacked through airstrikes. In recent papers, it is reported that six UN staff members were killed, while Israel says that the targeted facility was a “command and control centre” belonging to Hamas. 

 The UN is widely affected, with approximately 300 international and local aid workers killed in the Gaza war, which is of almost one-year duration. Kaag also complained about the Israeli High-Level political officials’ failure, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to honour commitments made. “We have no time. Time is waived,” she said. This is aimed at ensuring that there is action. 

 When challenged by the Israeli authorities that the required assistance is being provided to Gaza, she said that, indeed, poverty and malnutrition, including acute malnutrition amongst children, persist in the areas. Despite the Israeli’s tendency to accuse Hamas of siphoning off the aid, Kaag was very emphatic about the efficiency of UN operations as much as she understood the challenges of operating in a war-torn area. 

More than ever, Predatory Desires in the House of Stone, Unrwa, the United Nations’ largest humanitarian aid organisation, offers critical services to the people of Gaza. Nevertheless, the agency is accused of Hamas’ penetration, and Netanyahu wants to eliminate it. Enquiries are still being conducted into assertions that several of its workers in Unrwa partook in the aggression of Hamas on Israel, with several workers fired. 

 The most touching moment was when Kaag mentioned the tragedy that the people of Gaza and, of course, the Israeli hostages too stemmed from. She talked with Gazans and heard such a question as “When can we finish with suffering?” I think that suffering and destruction in the Gaza Strip will be a lifetime, at least for all the inhabitants there. Kaag was honest in conceding that even all the dollars given in aid, or all the rebuilding undertaken, could never replace the lives lost or the suffering endured. 

 The message is clear: the help coming from the world may partly help those needing bare necessities, but none of this puts back what was stolen from the Gazans. This has remained a humanitarian disaster in international politics since the international community has never addressed the causes of this conflict nor protected civilians. What has been lost and done to them is irreversible, and there will be no compensation for those lives, or the wounds sustained.